Hockey Says Putin Still Expected at G-20 as MH17 Attack Probed

July 18 (Bloomberg) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin is
still expected to attend the Group of 20 nations summit in
November, Australia said, as pro-Russian rebels were blamed for
shooting down a Malaysian jet over Ukraine.

“It is an economic summit,” Treasurer Joe Hockey said in
an interview in Sydney today when asked whether Putin was likely
to attend. “In an unrelated way, we can’t allow individual
events to prevent people from meeting together to resolve
differences.”

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing Co. 777 crashed en route to
Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam in the main battleground of
Ukraine’s civil war, killing all 298 people on board, including
28 Australians. The government in Kiev blamed the attack on pro-Russian separatists, while U.S. officials said the weapon was
probably a Russian-made model used widely in Eastern Europe.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who will host the
G-20 summit in Brisbane, said earlier today Russia would bear a
share of responsibility if it supplied weapons that brought down
the jet. His government summoned the Russian ambassador in
Canberra to discuss the crash.

“If, as now seems certain, it’s been brought down by a
Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile, Russia bears a heavy
share of responsibility,” Abbott said in a Melbourne radio
interview. “This is not something that can just be dismissed as
a tragic accident when you have Russian proxies using Russian-supplied equipment to do terrible things, if in fact this is
what turns out to have been the case.”

Putin’s Demand

Putin, who has repeatedly denied Russian involvement in the
fighting in Ukraine, has directed Russian military and civilian
authorities to “investigate this crime,” according to a
transcript of his remarks to Cabinet ministers. The separatists
have denied shooting down the plane.

President Barack Obama and his fellow G-7 leaders said in
March they would suspend partipation in the broader G-8 that
includes Russia as a sanction against Putin’s annexation of
Crimea.

“We use forums like the G-20 to mitigate the impact of
individual events on the momentum in the global economy,”
Hockey said.

Australia will work at the United Nations Security Council
for a binding resolution to ensure a full, impartial
investigation that will have full access to the crash site and
individuals who may have been involved, Abbott told parliament
today.

“This looks less like an accident than a crime,” Abbott
told parliament. “If so, the perpetrators must be brought to
justice.”

Australia has led efforts to find Malaysian Air Flight 370,
which disappeared in March with 239 people on board, with
investigators believing it crashed in waters off the nation’s
west coast. That killed six Australians.

Many passengers on board Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 were
en route to the 20th International AIDS Conference in Melbourne,
said Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, the meeting’s co-chair.